Build a Better Team in Five Minutes a Day

Author:
Casey Gale

Teamwork starts at the top, according to Martin Lanik, author of The Leader Habit: Master the Skills You Need to Lead in Just Minutes a Day, which will be released on April 19.

A sense of interconnectedness and cohesion among work team members is an important part of building a culture of continuous improvement and increasing employee performance and retention, writes Lanik, CEO of leadership-readiness platform Pinsight. “If individual team members don’t coordinate their efforts, overall productivity suffers. As a leader, you must ensure that your team is operating as a cohesive unit.”

Lanik suggests that leaders practice the following four exercises for five minutes each day:

1. Advocate for cohesion. “Teams are more effective when the individual members coordinate their efforts and share a common sense of purpose or unity,” Lanik writes. “Practice explicitly discussing the importance of the team acting as one and how that benefits the team using this exercise: After reviewing the agenda or discussion points for a team meeting, emphasize the importance of team cohesion by saying, ‘It is very important that we act as one; it will help us better achieve our shared goals.’”

2. Establish daily team-building habits. Team building activities aren’t limited to retreats. “You can also facilitate stronger cohesion by creating connections between team members and others in the organization on a daily basis,” Lanik writes. “After greeting someone (in an email or in person), connect them with another person that could help them or whom they would just enjoy meeting by saying, ‘I think you would really enjoy meeting [blank] because blank.’ For example, you could connect people who have worked on similar projects or share similar hobbies,” Lanik suggests.

3. Discuss a procedural improvement. There is always room for improvement when it comes to encouraging employees to work together. After discussing a task with someone, find a small procedural improvement by asking, ‘Who do you depend on to get your work done, and how can you better coordinate efforts with this person?’”

4. Link individual assignments with your team’s purpose.Sometimes, employees need to be reminded how their own work connects to the goals of their team and organization. “After reviewing what someone is working on, highlight how that project or task supports the team’s mission by saying, “Your work on [blank] is very important for our team’s mission to [blank],’ Lanik writes. “For example, ‘Your work on the social media campaign is very important for our team’s mission to reduce smoking in young adults.’”

What’s included?

Earn & Learn
Maintain your professional certifications with our industry-leading content for CMP and CASE in one convenient location.

30+ PCMA Webinars On Demand
Get the latest on technology, marketing, “how tos” and trends to push your events to the next level.

Checklists and Templates
From Risk Management, to room sets, PCMA provides you with the resources you need to get the job done.

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CASE Online Course

What is CASE?

The Certified Association Sales Executive 10 module online course is an interactive, self-paced, certificate course that fills your knowledge gaps, builds your business acumen and teaches you how to become an association mastermind. Discover how to anticipate the needs of your clients and be perceived as a partner, not just a vendor.

What’s Included?

Each of the first 9 modules features a self-assessment quiz to test your knowledge and ensure you have retained the course material

Modules 2-10 lead you through the steps to build an effective Account Plan for a client of your choosing; through research exercises and a SWOT Analysis you’ll identify opportunities on how you can best partner with your customers in the future

The course culminates with you presenting your strategic solutions to your target client and then guides you through a goal setting exercise you can apply to your future endeavors

Business Event Bootcamp

Take the next step to becoming an Event Producing rock star!

The strategies critical to keep business events vibrant, compelling and successful are constantly changing. Enter, the PCMA Business Event Bootcamp.

This online and self-paced event course is designed to give you and/or your team unlimited access to the latest trends and critical information for successful event planning.

Earn approved CE toward your CMP and CAE

Each module can be purchased separately for a customized learning program

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How can a team benefit?

Some corporations or associations don’t have the luxury of in house training that keeps their teams up on the latest success strategies for events. What happens after training is just as important as what happens during training.

Each module in the Business Event Bootcamp training program comes with a facilitator’s guide for team leaders. This guide is designed to help you navigate your team through each lesson and reinforce learning in the days and weeks following the training courses. Within each guide, you’ll have access to practical activities, reflection questions, and tools to take your team deeper into the course content and facilitate on-going conversations on the topics covered.